Week 3: Feedback for Learning

Last week, you learned about growth mindset, how everyone can develop their abilities with practice, training your brain to do new things. A key component in that process is feedback: as you learn something new, you will make mistakes (that’s natural!), and you need feedback in order to correct those mistakes. That’s how all learning works: practice, make mistakes, learn, practice some more, make some more mistakes, learn some more.
A big problem with school, however, is that there is often more of an emphasis on grades rather than feedback so that instead of getting feedback about your mistakes, you are punished for those mistakes. After years and years of being punished for mistakes, students understandably decide that the goal is to avoid mistakes at all costs… which means you avoid learning new things. If you can get good grades for doing things you already know how to do, why run the risk of trying something new and making mistakes?
In this class, though, I want to put the emphasis on feedback, without any grades. And that’s because I really want you to try to do new things, taking risks with your writing and also trying out new kinds of technology. Will you make mistakes? I hope so! That’s the whole idea: every time you make a mistake, it’s a chance to learn something new. So, in the words of Neil Gaiman, I hope you will make glorious and fantastic mistakes in this class so that you can learn glorious and fantastic new things.

Of course, it’s easy to say that mistakes are a good thing… but it still feels bad to make mistakes. Your brain is actually hardwired to respond more strongly to negative feedback; it’s a biological survival mechanism, and that’s okay. The crucial thing is to figure out how to move beyond that initial defensiveness in response to negative feedback so that you can embrace your mistakes and learn from them.
So, for this week’s Feedback assignment, I’ve selected some articles about feedback for you to read and explore so that you can start re-thinking what it means to make mistakes and to receive feedback, both positive and negative, about your learning. (Then, next week, I’ll have some articles to share about the flipside: the process of giving feedback to others.)

Feedback Resources

Specifically, I’d like you to select TWO articles that you want to write about in a blog post. Either way works; just make sure you take some time with your browsing so that you can find articles that are really useful for you (this whole assignment should take about one hour).

• • • A fixed mindset could be holding you back
      
    • Silence the critical voices in your head
    • Neil Gaiman’s advice on  the creative life (source for the quote above)
    • Rewire your self-critical brain
    • Why rejection hurts so much
    • How to get past negativity bias
    • Why it’s so hard to hear negative feedback
    • Seven ways to crush self-doubt

Your Blog Post

To finish up this assignment, write a blog post with your thoughts about the two articles that you read, along with your thoughts about feedback in general. Make sure to include the titles of the articles that you chose, plus a link to each article.
Feel free to write about anything you think is important related to receiving feedback and using it wisely. When you look back over your many years as a student, what are the most productive feedback experiences you can remember? The most negative? Think about learning beyond school too: what kinds of feedback have helped you to grow as a learner at work? in your sports and hobbies? in other aspects of your life?
Please include an image and image information in your blog post.
When you are ready to publish, make sure you include the phrase “Feedback Thoughts” somewhere in the title of your post, and use Week 3, Feedback as the post labels (don’t forget to put a comma between the two labels).
Then you are ready to do the Declaration:

DECLARATION: PLEASE READ CAREFULLY: I have read two articles about feedback, and I have shared my thoughts on this topic in a blog post. POST TITLE: I included the phrase “Feedback Thoughts” in my blog post title. POST LABELS: I used “Feedback, Week 3” to label the post (comma between the two labels). IMAGE: I Included at least one image with image information.